Talk:Xerath/@comment-76.79.199.130-20120514190213
After playing 20 or 30 ranked games with Xerath, I've noticed some things that are prevailing about him. First of all, Xerath is completely reliant on his team composition. Xerath requires a team who can disrupt enemies or falter enemy attempts to assassinate and kill him. An example (only one out of many) of a good team synergy would include a team composition such as: (Xerath + Jarvan IV/Alistar), both of which can disrupt enemies and allow Xerath to do his job. An example of a bad team syngery would be an team with weak crowd control or composed completely of relatively squishy champions, including himself. Xerath's damage, of course, is reliant on his availability of his ultimate, which is potentially half of his burst output. This is countered by the relatively low cooldown on the ultimate, but during teamfights after bursting down an enemy he is potentially half of a true AP mage, dishing out somewhat noticable damage every 3-5 seconds afterwards. There are situational conditions to this. With some experimentation and a duo queue partner, I've attained a 100% win-lose ratio (15ish games?) playing Xerath with a Jarvan IV player. How is this possible? Well, if Jarvan IV can land a well-trapped Cataclysm ultimate that traps at least 3 of the enemy team, Xerath can burst them down to at least 1/2 HP, fed or not, leaving the AD carry or somebody else to finish them off relatively quickly, as opposed to just one champion being bursted down. Basically, if you can burst down more than one champion, to death or not, you can make up for your flaws, in a sense. However, if fed alone, Xerath can wreck havoc only on one target and burst it down, leaving the remaining 4 enemies alive with a 40-50 second cooldown with his ult. With a COMPLETELY useless or unfed team (compared to the enemy team), this could result in a loss, since some teams can handle 4v5. Of course, there are different situations, but most of the time this is the case, especially if you are considering to solo queue ranked. During the laning phase, Xerath is absolutely vulerable to ganks. After burning flash, Xerath can only protect himself with a stun, against either the mid/top enemy champion or the jungler, leaving one of the enemies still chasing. With enough CC during the lane phase, Xerath is food. The bonus movement speed on Xerath is also useless since you must spend time channeling Locus of Power. Yet despise these obvious flaws, Xerath, if played with high skill, can be extremely deadly. With correct positioning behind rocks, trees, teammates, crannies and nooks, Xerath can dish out EXTREME amounts of damage for being so safe. A player can also be successful during the laning phase if one learns how to farm when being extremely pushed to the turret, conserving mana, and retrieving wards. Another noticable trait is item synergy. There are some items that are just wonderful for Xerath, the obvious one being Zhonya's Hourglass, which gives him another potential escape mechanism (although it may not be useful sometimes, you'd just die 2 seconds after), high AP, and +armor added to his already +armor from his passive, rendering the AD carry or AD bruiser top not useless but less of a threat compared to the AP Mid.